

STUART LEVENBACH
Chief of Staff, NOAA
2018-2020
HOW TRUMP TRIED, BUT LARGELY FAILED, TO DERAIL AMERICA’S TOP CLIMATE REPORT
January 1, 2021
Stuart Levenbach, a political appointee who was then chief of staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the assessment, pushed the scientists preparing the document to tone down the findings in their report summary, according to people involved in the discussions.
Dr. Levenbach, who is now a senior adviser at the White House National Economic Council, said in a statement that he simply wanted the summary to be more clear about the assumptions it relied upon about future emissions.
The career staff refused to make those changes. That refusal came at a cost: Virginia Burkett, a climate scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey who was chairwoman of the Global Change Research Program, was forced out of her role.